Meat and fish products, typically, for example, sausage products, may be processed in a variety of different ways. In some cases, products are simply stored for a certain length of time under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. In other cases, products are cooked, or smoked, or cooked and smoked. While being processed, the products are, in most cases, supported on hangers, formerly referred to as smoke sticks. The products, usually sausages, were simply draped over the hangers and suspended on a conveyor system, while being stored in or transported through the processing facility. One of the problems in the design of such hangers is that they must be manually loaded with product and then placed in position on the support or conveyor. In the great majority of facilities, the loaded hangers must be placed by hand on the conveyor from one side or the other of the conveyor. In the past, it has been the usual practice to, as it were customize, the facility, so that hangers loaded with product could be loaded from one side of the conveyor, but not from the other.
In many cases, the hangers simply employed a form of hook system at each end, and the hooks then had to be manually engaged with portions of the conveyor. It will be apparent that this task presents some difficulties. A hanger loaded with product may weigh 50 to 70 pounds. Reaching into a chamber or an oven, and attempting to engage a hook located at the far end of the hanger, with a catch or eye at the far side of the conveyor, in these circumstances, is clearly a somewhat difficult task particularly, when it is borne in mind that the hangers must be loaded on the conveyor at brief time intervals.
An improved form of hanger is disclosed in U.S. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,094 in the name of Knud Simonsen Industries Limited. In this system, the hanger is provided with an arm at each end, terminating in a ball. The conveyor was provided with hanger support bars, each of the support bars being formed of a hollow tube, with an open slot along the lower side. In this system, the ball on one of the arms of the hanger could be fed into the hollow tube at the "near" end, and the ball could then be slid along inside the tube to the far end of the tube, and the ball at the near end of the hanger could then simply be placed in the near end of the tube. In this way, the weight of the product on the hanger was at least partially supported as soon as the first ball entered the near end of the tube.
An added advantage of this form of hanger system was the fact that the hangers could be attached to their support bars, from either side of the conveyor. This provided a considerably more flexible design. While this system functioned satisfactorily, it was somewhat more expensive to manufacture than the simpler forms of hangers used in the past, and consequently it was not always acceptable to customers. Clearly, it is desirable to provide a hanger having the advantages described above, but which can be manufactured at a price comparable with that of earlier prior art systems.